Tags
by bazzer
Summary: When tragedy strikes Brittany the roles of comforter and guardian are filled without thought. But she's not sure why everyone's so surprised considering they were all friends before anyone else even acknowledged each other. Quinn/Britt/San friendship


Quick and kind of angst-y.

Disclaimer: I own this computer and that's pretty much it. Glee and it's characters do not belong to me, if they didn't Heather Morris would have more lines and Naya Rivera and Dianna Agron would have more songs, but alas…

Takes place senior year, Brittana undertones and mostly in third person around Quinn, but in reaction to something that happens to Brittany, ipso facto, Brittany centric… I'm 71% certain I used that wrong. My high school Latin teacher is rolling in her grave right now, I just know it. My English teacher probably expects it.

Let me know what you think, yes? _kthxbye_, Bazzer

* * *

Will Schuester watched his Glee kids with something akin to parental pride. They had gone through so much drama, break-ups and make-ups, betrayals and new friends, meshing of groups and breaking of old bonds and yet they still manage to put it behind them and work together when the time called for it. The kids were scattered around the choir room in groups working on their Regional's performance. There was a light knock on the door which drew his attention to a young man standing just outside the doorway.

He looked familiar, but not someone Will knew by sight, so he assumed he was a former McKinley student that had taken a language other than Spanish. He couldn't have been out of school long if his face still registered, but he looked too old with his dress greens and sad eyes.

"Mr. Schuester?" he questioned softly when the teacher's eyes found his in a curious stare.

"Yes," Will offered his hand to the young soldier, "How can I help you, Mr. -?"

He caught his hand in a firm shake. "Private," he corrected, "PFC Turner, sir, James Turner. I'm here to speak to Brittany Pierce, if I may? Her mother told me she'd be here."

"Brittany?" he repeated softly, dropping the hand and shifting his shoulders, unconsciously shielding the other man's view of the room.

"Please, sir," he clenched his jaw, "It's important."

Will let his eyes narrow, but moved aside with a gesture further into the room.

Close to the doorway Quinn Fabray was circled with her boyfriend Sam Evans, friend Mercedes Jones, and former best friend and fellow cheerleader Santana Lopez. The head Cheerio was the first to notice the man as he entered the Glee club sanctuary, and she recognized him immediately. Her hand blindly gripped at the sleeve of Santana's under armor.

Mercedes noticed next and hummed in appreciation, "Gotta love a man in uniform."

"What the hell, Fabray?" the Latina ignored the diva and tried to shake the blonde's hold.

But Quinn wouldn't be moved and she found her voice stuck in the back of her throat, so she tugged once and nodded her head towards the soldier.

Sparing a second to roll her eyes at the odd behavior but following the cue anyways, she was forced into a double take only to gasp as the vision didn't change. It wasn't so much the sight of James Turner that shocked her, it was the fact that he was alone. "Oh no," she murmured, "no, no, no, no, no…" the hand of her free arm moving to cover Quinn's and grip it tightly as the soldier finally approached Brittany.

"Hey, Legs," he rumbled in the still air of the suddenly quiet room.

Her blonde ponytail whipped around her neck at the speed she'd stood from her conversation with Mike and Rachel, "Jimmy!" She stepped like she was about to throw her arms around him in an exuberant hug, but stuttered her step and dropped her arms as her eyes darted around the empty space behind him. "You're alone," she started suspiciously, "Where's -?"

He shook his head, dropping his head in the process and swallowing heavily, "Britt, baby, I'm so sorry-"

"No," she took a solid pace backwards.

He matched the step and reached up his hands imploringly, "Britt, please, you gotta let me-"

"No!" she growled once more, trying to take another step back but finding the way blocked by the back wall. Tears obscured her vision and she wiped at her eyes, trying to see, "You swore to me, James Turner! _He _swore to me!"

"Baby, listen to me," he implored once more, desperate he grabbed at her shoulders which she immediately shrugged out of.

"Don't touch me!"

Her knees buckled against the wall and he seized her shoulders once more, shaking her just once to get her to look at him, but before a word could pass his lips there was a small, tanned body in polyester armor pushing between them. "Get your hands off her, you jackass!"

"Santana?" he looked confused at the fierceness of her glare as she slipped her arms around the other girl and gently lowered her to the ground.

"She's going into shock, _genius_, you can't just fuckin' shake her!" She turned her back on him and settled in next to Brittany, rocking her gently and murmuring nonsense into her hair.

"Look, Lopez-" but there was another body between them now, another blonde in red, white, and black. "_Quinn_?"

She shook her head and ignored his incredulous tone. "You can't be here right now, Jimmy."

"You don't understand, Quinn," he lowered his tone to match hers, "I have to talk to her about Tony."

The look she gave him wasn't one he recognized on her angel face, but it was the one that had secured her position as HBIC. "Look at her, Jim, and tell me she doesn't already know what you have to say about him."

He did look then, over the small girl's shoulder at Brittany. She was curled into herself and leaning bodily into Santana, shoulders shaking as sobs rocked her body. Her dark protector continued to brush her hands over the other girl's face, across her shoulders, down her back before starting the circuit again, all the while talking into her blonde hair as tear tracks stained her own cheeks.

"She needs me," he whispered, trying to move past her but her hands on his chest stopped him cold.

"She doesn't need you, Jimmy, because right now she won't even see _you_. She isn't going to see the boy she grew up with, her brother's best friend or the guy who taught her how to kick windmills or do a Can-Can. She isn't going to see the guy she had a crush on for seven years, or the one of the two boys that made her go silent for months after you left for Iraq. All she's going to see is a man in a uniform that came to tell her that brother's dead." She paused to let her words sink in, watched as his face paled and he pulled the beret from his head to rub at the stubble of hair on his head, "You can see her when she's able to _see_ you, but for right now we've got her."

He growled lowly, "I'm not leaving, Quinn, and you can't make me."

Her eyes reflected like ice, "Don't underestimate me, James."

He glanced around her then to find the girl was flanked by four boys standing with arms crossed and severe looks on their faces. He squeezed his eyes shut and dipped his head to replace the cap and break the sight of the family that had grown around Brittany in his absence. Tony would be pleased by their protective nature, he reminded himself, so he forced himself to try and be pleased by it as well.

With a sigh he reached into his right breast pocket and withdrew a 3x5 glossy picture, creased down the middle, and two pieces of stamped metal on a ball-bearing chain. "I came with the MP," he explained, "to deliver his effects to the Captain and Mrs. Pierce, but he told me that these went to B and I was to put them in her hands myself. They were the two things that went with him everywhere. " Resolutely he pressed them into Quinn's waiting hands and folded his own calloused ones around them. "We caught this video of your performance at Sectionals last year," he gave a hallow laugh and gripped her hands tighter, "I can't remember him ever crying in the fifteen years I've known him, but hearing you and Santana sing, and watching Britt dance-" he broke off and swallowed his own tears. Letting go of her hands he stepped back, "He was a proud man, a proud son, and a proud soldier, but there was nothing in the world he loved being more than a big brother."

Quinn ignored the tears that finally began to tip from her own eyes and run down her cheeks. She looked down at the photograph in her hands. 17-year-old Anthony Pierce and 13-year-old Brittany Pierce were smiling up at her astride twin blue and purple Yamahas. The same bright eyes and wide, toothy smiles a fraction of the similarity between brother and sister. Sitting in front of Anthony, wearing his helmet and reaching for the handle bars like she belonged there was 6-year-old Hannah and clinging joyfully to Brittany's neck, secure in her arms and pressing a sloppy kiss to her older sister's cheek was 3-year-old Christabel.

The head Cheerio was already familiar with the photo as another copy hung prominently in Brittany's locker, though her copy was smudged from where she pressed a kiss from her fingertips every morning and this one was creased down the middle and stained with dirt and sand. She tangled the chain in her fingers and dropped the tags free. Holding them to eye level she watched them spin and glint dully in the fluorescent lighting revealing the name and information emblazoned there in flashes.

"I promised she'd be taken care of," he told her and together they looked over to where Brittany's shoulders had slowed their violent shaking but her fingers were painfully twisted in Santana's uniform top. The Latina was ignoring the uncomfortable pull, however, and concentrating on keeping her lips pressed to the blonde's temple and her arms around her body.

"She's in good hands, Jimmy, and you know it." She took a step back and it was the shifting of her four guards combined with her stare that kept him from following. "We," she glanced back at Santana who was now watching the exchange, the darker girl nodded slightly, "We've got her."

He nodded hesitantly, almost painfully, and shifted his weight backwards, "I'll be around. For when she's ready. Just-just let her know I'm not going anywhere." He waited for her confirming nod before spinning on his heel and leaving through the way made by curious Gleeks.

She turned her back on him only after he had disappeared around the doorframe, parting the boys with a touch at Puck and Sam's shoulders she stood over her fellow cheerleaders and leveled a look at everyone else in the room. She winced and clenched her jaw to control the anger at their pitying gazes. She was willing to bet none of them even knew Brittany's brother was in the army or serving in Iraq, if they knew she had a brother at all. A few, like Mercedes and Artie, looked surprised at the ferocious level of protectiveness she was displaying over the other blonde, although she didn't know why they would be. The three of them had been best friends longer than most of the people in that room had even acknowledged each other's existence.

She caught Mr. Schuester's stare and arched a single eyebrow, "Do you think you could give us a moment?"

He looked shocked at the cool address and visibly shook himself from his stupor, "Of course." He nodded and made a sweeping gesture towards the rest of the club, "We can continue in the auditorium? Or call it a day?" His toned was questioning and directed at Quinn, but she had already disregarded him to kneel on Brittany's other side.

There was a vague awareness of people filing out, of Tina and Kurt hesitating and Rachel voice saying it would likely be best to leave them for the moment, but she and Santana were caught in a staring match that superseded it all. Every stupid little thing that had come between in the last three or four years suddenly seemed so… _trivial. _

Finally Santana's eyes dropped as she pressed a kiss to the crown of Brittany's head, which was tucked against her collar. Without looking she held out her hand to Quinn and that was all the invitation she needed to fall in next to the taller blonde and wrap her arms around both girls.


End file.
